If a disc priest dropped all mastery and stacked crit to say 26% his heals would have a modifier of (1+0.26*(2+0.325)) = 1.6045. With the new system this would become (1+0.5*0.208)*(1+0.25*(1+0.208)) = 1.437408, a nerf of 11%.

However reverting to full mastery stacking with 15% crit though gives you (1+0.5*0.348)*(1+0.25*(1+0.348)) = 1.569638, so a very slightly nerf to what you could achieve before with crit, but that does not take crit overheal into account. Factoring a small amount of overheal in it ends up being a small buff.

I'm a bit sleepy (so forgive me if I'm wrong) but aren't you assuming 25%, not 15%, crit in your mastery stacking scenario? Haven't looked at the actual numbers for your mastery values but the formula looks ok at a glance. I didn't make a proper forumla, just set it up like this:
base+(base*0,008*mastery)+crit%*(base+(base*0,008*mastery)+(base+(base*0,008*mastery))(0,0 16*mastery)).

The obsession with using WoL as proof is futile. People respecced to Disc by the droves in order to take advantage of Discs...well, advantages. Holy was shoved under the rug since it couldn't completely negate mechanics like disc could. But to believe these fights weren't/aren't doable without a disc priest is total folly.

You were holy for all those fights, which is 50% of all the tier's fights, but still, if even technically holy is viable, its isn't really viable when most guilds will bench you or force you to respec disc. If Holy was shoved under the rug since it couldn't completely negate mechanics like disc could, that's make holy less effective, less efficient. and....less viable.

Looks like with the current changes to disc's nerfs, Holy is going to have another patch of being under the rug. I'm just afraid it would choke there.

I'm a bit sleepy (so forgive me if I'm wrong) but aren't you assuming 25%, not 15%, crit in your mastery stacking scenario? Haven't looked at the actual numbers for your mastery values but the formula looks ok at a glance. I didn't make a proper forumla, just set it up like this:
base+(base*0,008*mastery)+crit%*(base+(base*0,008*mastery)+(base+(base*0,008*mastery))(0,0 16*mastery)).

In addition to this IF takes a big hit from the change.

Oh looks like a copy paste error the correct numbers for mastery stacking are: (1+0.5*0.384)*(1+0.15*(1+0.384)) = 1.4394592, which is essentially the same as crit stacking with the new system. This is because mastery is roughly equal to crit at 38.4% mastery and 15% crit, so with the new formula 38.4% mastery and 16% crit is exactly equal to 20.8% mastery and 27% crit. Stat inflation however is going to boost that much more than before, because the buff to mastery far exceeds the nerf to crit. I think this is a bit fortuitous for my values, because my gear level is only 498. Someone with a higher gear level will see less of a drop.

IF is (1+0.5*0.384)*(1+(1+0.384))/((1+0.5*0.384)/(1+0.15*(1+0.384)) = 1.974163630341 with the new system or (1+2.325)/(1+0.25*2.325) = 2.102766798419 with the old system.

Don't forget that the new system makes the heals bigger and by stacking crit you devalued the inner focus.

But IF with spirit shell used to double the heal rather than make crit 100%. If that was intended behaviour then since it is always better to use inner focus with spirit shell it is indeed a fairly large nerf.

I think this is a good change as it makes all stats good for disc again. Crit is good because you don't need to stack it too much and it will overheal less and your healing is more even and less random.

I think PWS should not crit, but have a scaling factor with crit so that you don't have uneven values (very annoying not being sure if you gonna get a HUGE PWS that won't get absorbed).

There is no way disc is going to be a bench spec in 5.2. Disc no longer has permanent shield cooldowns via DA.

Most people are going to hate the idea of using atonement more and not having an easy mode shield padding spell to top WoL.

I honestly see it being 50/50 holy and disc

You must be joking. 10man hc is already an atonement fest and atonement is just really boring. Target the boss spam away, pop archangel and spirit shell the raid when a big burst is inc. That is easy mode.

All the 5.2 changes do so far does is remove most of the "preventive" flavour from discipline and try to replace it with reactive healing without any real reactive healing tools except for atonement.

The new changes are a step in the right direction in terms of stat balance, but they don't really buff throughput, where disc is currently hurting the most. Very quickly after hte patch people will realise that holy is now much stronger than discipline except on niche fights for atonement and spirit shell.

As soon as the first few weeks pass and the top of the priest logs is all holy and disc gets fed up with 3 button healing, you will see holy being the dominant spec, except in a few 10man progress guilds, where you need disc to atonement spam because you don't have a monk.

I don't think the design choice is bad, I think the swing between a non-crit and a crit was too big previously, and mastery was basically a trash stat. However I don't think the implementation/numbers are fair, disc is already in a bad spot on the ptr and this change doesn't help things. Agreed regarding PW:S.

You were holy for all those fights, which is 50% of all the tier's fights, but still, if even technically holy is viable, its isn't really viable when most guilds will bench you or force you to respec disc. If Holy was shoved under the rug since it couldn't completely negate mechanics like disc could, that's make holy less effective, less efficient. and....less viable.

Looks like with the current changes to disc's nerfs, Holy is going to have another patch of being under the rug. I'm just afraid it would choke there.

Even "if" holy is viable? Mazi is Holy, and is 16/16 heroic. I don't think you know what you are talking about. If I go by your statement here about holy not being able to negate mechanics like disc, and therefore less effective/viable/useless, then all other healing specs should get benched to. Just bring Disc priests, right?

Too bad that's not the case. Each fight is killable without a disc, and I guarantee a holy priest can keep up with or outheal any other healer. Holy is just fine, and has been for two whole expansions. It's not just technically viable, it completely and totally is.

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 06:43 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Havoc12

You must be joking. 10man hc is already an atonement fest and atonement is just really boring. Target the boss spam away, pop archangel and spirit shell the raid when a big burst is inc. That is easy mode.

If you choose to go disc. I agree that Discs playstyle is mind numbing, but it is absolutely not necessary. It can help on progression having the added damage, but its nothing that can't be circumvented by other means. I have to wait and see how it all plays out, but I have had the suspicion that disc and holy will never be balanced enough, and even a few % higher is going to push most priests to go to the "dominant" spec, even if both are viable.

It's the inherent folly in trying to have two healing specs under one class, just like 3 tank specs was silly for a DK. They need to just remove Disc as a healer, but I'm afraid we are too far gone for that.

These changes are good on paper (the crit = absorb thing), but point remains: if a 700k+ HP tank is at 20% life, and you crit = absorb on him...that's still healing that needs to be done by someone.

But in terms of actual survivability, if the tank is at 150k hp with a 100k shield his effective health is 250k, which is the same as if the tank has 150k hp and someone heals him for 100k.

The only difference is that shield, if not used, will fall off eventually if no additional damage is taken. Worst case scenario is overhealing, but either case works just fine. Further, if they tank is topped back up to 700k, then hey, look at that, their effective health is actually 800k because of the 100k shield, which elimantes that much mana needing to be spent later.

Spazzeh that is wrong, on the tank absorbs are better than heals, no question about it. This change is actually great for tank healing because the tank takes constant damage more or less. The only problem of random aegis is healing up a static deficit, all the aegis is wasted, but the again most of hte crit is wasted too because it leads to uneve healing.

The disc playstyle is not mindnumbing on 25man, only atonement spam is boring. Bubble spam is very challenging to maximise, more than any other spec. Its 10 times easier to get max output from holy than to get max output for disc. Sniping other healer and being on the top of the meters is not the same as getting maximum performance. I play both disc and holy equally well and I like both for their strengths and weaknesses.

In the current tier holy is a very powerful spec with excellent output, but unfortunately disc is much stronger on almost all fights, because of the fight design. Its a lot of burst and a lot of low damage, and where holy is very sensitive to overheal, disc is extremely strong on these fights. I always choose the spec, which works best in a particular encounter and I don't mean the one which produces the highest healing, but rather the one whose playstyle fits the fight the best.

Discipline fits the bill for most fights in the tier. As for being holy for every fight, I would say that is definitely not for everyone. Hc vizier, lei shi normal and hc and empress, disc really makes a big difference in surival. It allows your raid to screw up and not pay any penalty. In these three fights disc really does trivialise certain very dangerous mechanics and that means being disc instead of holy is the best choice for your raid. It does not mean its not healable as holy, it means each disc priest you bring makes the encounter more and more forgiving. If your raid executes everything perfectly, then it does not matter, but if they don't disc can reduce the number of wipes taken to kill the boss dramatically.

In 5.2 this will be different, because unless its a niche fight disc will be broken, especially on 25man. Monks also received a boost to eminence, which means they can provide good dps based healing as well.

I think disc and holy can definitely be balanced. The problem is that blizzard and a lot of players overvalue absorbs. Disc should always be tuned to have a throughput that is 5% behind the median of the other healers and holy should always be 5% above disc in maximum throughput. Absorbs should be roughly 40% of disc healing and they should not be able to stack them too high. Don't make all fights niche fights for discipline. Easy.

Maximizing disc bubbles wasn't hard on 25 man LK, and I don't suspect it will be in 5.2.

You make it sound "easy" to balance, but I have a strong suspicion your randomly thrown around "5%" numbers are not the solution you think. There are some pretty damn brilliant people at Blizzard, as while there is the occasional bonehead decision there are far too many factors to consider that weigh into any semblance of "balance."

And yes, to me disc is mind numbing. You use more of your toolbox in 10s than 25s, and it's still extremely boring.

But in terms of actual survivability, if the tank is at 150k hp with a 100k shield his effective health is 250k, which is the same as if the tank has 150k hp and someone heals him for 100k.

The only difference is that shield, if not used, will fall off eventually if no additional damage is taken. Worst case scenario is overhealing, but either case works just fine. Further, if they tank is topped back up to 700k, then hey, look at that, their effective health is actually 800k because of the 100k shield, which elimantes that much mana needing to be spent later.

Abilities based off of one's % or total HP pop up quite often in WoW. While I haven't read in-depth the abilities of bosses in ToT, the disadvantages of this new system on bosses such as Tsulong and Gara'jal have already been stated. Isn't there at least one boss where there is a debuff that requires full health to get rid of? These types of bosses could very well be "Well, just spec Holy" scenarios, which is something that is (overall) trying to be avoided, yeah?

And let's not even get into the PvP ramifications of this change. =\ Non-dispellable DA surely is a help, but aiming for a crit (IF) to get your partner out of anyone's execute range = gone.

I really hope the new divine aeigis doesn't go live as it is... I think that's the nerf that is going to bench the disc priests.

I kinda hope it does, I am interested to see what this does to disc priests as being utility for raids. It's an interesting concept.

Normally blizz just either nerfs or buffs something, this time they at least got somewhat creative with the spec.

Pros:
Offers a diverse play style within a single spec. A lot of people discussing how you could either be crit/mastery at this point and while they would be on par, they would offer very different things. Need I say reforge swapping for specs where mitigating more damage is important? Or just simply having 2 very VERY viable sets of stats for the spec to dabble in.

Buff to atonement healing will be fairly interesting for your tank healers if you ask me. I think disc is going to be a fairly strong tank healer with the changes personally. Via Atonment, IF+DA+PW:S+Shell... rotating these three spells on a tank effectively increasing the tanks HP for QUITE a long period of time and requiring less stress on other healers to worry about tanks.

Cons:

Perhaps slightly more complicated to play, because you will have to be a bit more selective on what you are doing with your spells. Without having the DA blanketing effect unless you IF+PoH a group, I foresee a lot of disc priests who only played with this mentality struggling in the next tier knowing what to do next.

Regen nerf, not a huge nerf, but again. Making the spec more complicated in terms of what you are gearing yourself with and how you are casting your spells.

Disc will still be way better than Holy. Atonement is already overpowered and it's getting better. PW:S spam will be really good in 10 mans. DA change is gonna hurt, but with smart use of inner focus and the addition of PW:S I don't see myself struggling. Spirit Shell will still be good for absorbing spike damage.

The new mastery is a buff to disc priest, the new divine aegis is a hard nerf for single target healing and atonement healing I don't see how you can view this as a buff. The absorbtion portion of our mastery will be virtually useless without crit with the expection of those moments in which we can spam a little PW:S (I still don't know just how viable this may or may not be).

Disc priest X has 8824 mastery, which translates to 56.76% buff to our absorbs in live and 36.33% buff to absorbs and 18.71% buff to healing post 5.2.

Disc priest X casts Smite now (in live) and hits for 35391 and heals for 35391 but then crits for 70782 and heals for 70782 + (35391*1.5676) absorb for a total of 126,260 total healing.

Disc priest X casts Smite in 5.2 and you get 41820 heal + 57012 absorb for a total of 98,832 total healing.

The same would go with any other spell, it's a very significant nerf, the higher your crit is live, the harder the nerf will hit you in 5.2. We obviously needed a nerf but this, along with the prayer of healing not including Aegis nerf and the spirit shell not benefiting from mastery nerf AND the rapture not using small cooldowns nerf, let's see how many disc priests make it into the logs. I don't mean to sound like a whiner, I know I'll still play disc and eventually it will all sort itself out, but this is not the "reassuring" I was hoping for.

LOOOL! Are u for real? One specc heal the other one prevent damage. Thats right captain obvious, here take this rock!
How should i put it so even u can understand!??? hmmmm... What healingspecc are people using the most?
Do you even see any holypriest in raids?(5.1) (and no, slackerguilds and LFR doesnt counts)

Infracted

What he means to say is that one spec will shine on one encounter, and the other on another. Skilled priests that play at high-level adapt according to encounter and respec as necessary. Both specs are great.

If you really have to ask "what spec is best", and honestly think it's only about the healing numbers, you may want to read up some.

Disc is often favoured in top encounters because preventing damage is usually more productive than letting it happen and then healing it, especially if you already have other healers that can do only that. That however doesn't mean holy is bad.

Even "if" holy is viable? Mazi is Holy, and is 16/16 heroic. I don't think you know what you are talking about. If I go by your statement here about holy not being able to negate mechanics like disc, and therefore less effective/viable/useless, then all other healing specs should get benched to. Just bring Disc priests, right?

Too bad that's not the case. Each fight is killable without a disc, and I guarantee a holy priest can keep up with or outheal any other healer. Holy is just fine, and has been for two whole expansions. It's not just technically viable, it completely and totally is.

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 06:43 PM ----------

I don't know who Mazi is, but did he clear all 16/16 heroic AS holy? Also, what you say about other healing specs should get benched is irrelevant, since they don't really have a choice, holy does - any holy can respec disc, and that's where all the frustration comes from. If holy and disc didn't belong to the same class, I'd bet you'd see the same amount of discs you see today, but way more holy than what you see today. Pallies and Shammies bring lots of utility to pass up, Monks were just OP at the start and declined a bit, druids and holy priests, the big "raw healing" specs, were left behind.

You say holy was fine for two who expansions, that's not correct, whether you like it or not. Remember Firelands? Holy priests were at a very bad spot with no raid cd except for an 8 minute Divine Hymn that did less healing than most of their spells anyway for the same amout of casting time. Only in 4.3 when DH was made a real raid cd, holy priests were viable again.

I don't know who Mazi is, but did he clear all 16/16 heroic AS holy? Also, what you say about other healing specs should get benched is irrelevant, since they don't really have a choice, holy does - any holy can respec disc, and that's where all the frustration comes from. If holy and disc didn't belong to the same class, I'd bet you'd see the same amount of discs you see today, but way more holy than what you see today. Pallies and Shammies bring lots of utility to pass up, Monks were just OP at the start and declined a bit, druids and holy priests, the big "raw healing" specs, were left behind.

You say holy was fine for two who expansions, that's not correct, whether you like it or not. Remember Firelands? Holy priests were at a very bad spot with no raid cd except for an 8 minute Divine Hymn that did less healing than most of their spells anyway for the same amout of casting time. Only in 4.3 when DH was made a real raid cd, holy priests were viable again.

Oy...

If Disc were a separate class, and had the same amount of players...you'd STILL see the same amount of Holy, because there are finite players, and within that, a finite amount that play healers.

And I suppose Holy's weakness is why Paragon 3-healed Heroic Rag 25man with a Pally, Druid, and Holy Priesrt, yeah? One raid cooldown does not a viable healer make...it just makes things nicer. Regardless of ANY buffs or ANY utility Holy may ever get (short of an exact copy), Barrier will ALWAYS have it's uses and be preferred in some situations.

If Disc were a separate class, and had the same amount of players...you'd STILL see the same amount of Holy, because there are finite players, and within that, a finite amount that play healers.

And I suppose Holy's weakness is why Paragon 3-healed Heroic Rag 25man with a Pally, Druid, and Holy Priesrt, yeah? One raid cooldown does not a viable healer make...it just makes things nicer. Regardless of ANY buffs or ANY utility Holy may ever get (short of an exact copy), Barrier will ALWAYS have it's uses and be preferred in some situations.

Was the "Oy" necessary? We are having a nice discussion here, lets respecting one another.

I think you're wrong. If holy was a different class than disc, it would have had more userbase from players who play monk, shammy, and druids. The fact not many play holy now is because disc is so much stronger in most fights, brings lots of utility, and allows 10m groups to beat enrage timers.

As for 4.2, go back and read threads of how poor holy was at the time. No raid cd, very limited mana regen, even Blizzard eventually came to the conclusion it needs a buff, and they did just that in 4.3. To you DH makes things nicer, to many it was a necessary cd, and in DS it proved to be a very powerful tool. In MoP it is slightly less effective.

I don't know who Mazi is, but did he clear all 16/16 heroic AS holy? Also, what you say about other healing specs should get benched is irrelevant, since they don't really have a choice, holy does - any holy can respec disc, and that's where all the frustration comes from. If holy and disc didn't belong to the same class, I'd bet you'd see the same amount of discs you see today, but way more holy than what you see today. Pallies and Shammies bring lots of utility to pass up, Monks were just OP at the start and declined a bit, druids and holy priests, the big "raw healing" specs, were left behind.

You say holy was fine for two who expansions, that's not correct, whether you like it or not. Remember Firelands? Holy priests were at a very bad spot with no raid cd except for an 8 minute Divine Hymn that did less healing than most of their spells anyway for the same amout of casting time. Only in 4.3 when DH was made a real raid cd, holy priests were viable again.

I do remember firelands, I was busy healing every fight there as holy except Majordomo, and that was only due to PW:B. And yes, all heroic. So holy has been fine for two expacs, an I continue to stand by that.

Further, your "point" is irrelevant. Holy can do the job, ergo holy is viable. I don't see how that's so hard to understand. Disc has a unique tool set that makes some fights easier to stomach (empress, vizier), but you aren't crippled without a disc.